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Justin Trudeau, Tom Mulcair share ancestors, popular website claims

Tom Mulcair, the leader of Canada's official Opposition, will celebrate his one-year milestone in Toronto Sunday with an anniversary-themed speech to the Canadian Labour Congress.Photo: Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press/Files

The two prominent politicians share a set of eighth-great-grandparents – Mathieu Amiot and Marie Miville, who were married in Quebec in 1650 – the website says.

Second cousins share great-grandparents, meaning Trudeau and Mulcair are cousins nine times removed from each other.

Neither cousin was available for comment on their newfound relation Thursday.

“Amiot was born in the late 1620s and worked as an interpreter for the Jesuits,” a statement from Ancestry.ca said. “When he married Marie, who was born in 1632, her dowry brought him property in the town of Québec, making him a very successful landowner.”

The Jesuits initially came to New France as missionaries in the early 1600s.

“Anybody who owned land has a better lease on life than the average voyageur at the time,” said Lesley Anderson, a family historian and content specialist with Ancestry.ca.

Amiot and Miville were among the first Quebec settlers, and apparently had quite an impact on the political future of a country that, at the time, didn’t yet exist.

Anderson said that French-Canadian heritage is a little easier to trace than other lines within Canada. This is because any marriages, baptisms or burials at the time were recorded if they were affiliated with a church.

The nearly 400-year-old ties may not be enough to merit any changes to the Trudeau or Mulcair Christmas card lists, however. Neither Mulcair nor Trudeau have expressed much interest, for instance, in political coalitions.

Trudeau is the favourite to win the Liberal leadership this weekend, which, if he succeeded, would leave the two distant relatives in charge of opposition parties vying to take down the Conservatives.

Ancestry.ca has revealed familial ties between political rivals before.

In September of 2011, when then-Ontario Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty and leader of the Progressive Conservative party of Ontario Tim Hudak were battling for provincial leadership, the website said the rivals were 10th cousins, also through a shared Quebec heritage.

During the 2006 election campaign, the website also concluded that Stephen Harper was related to actor Robb Wells, better known as “Ricky” on the cult-classic television series Trailer Park Boys. The unlikely duo shares a fifth-great-grandfather, according to Ancestry.ca.